Can you share a little bit about why you chose to initially study psychology at Queen's University Belfast?

I have always found the idea of human behaviour and the reasoning behind this fascinating. From a young age I would always think about why people did certain things or how people were so different. This interest continued to grow as I did and during my GCSE’s my school had a short placement program which I ended up working in a primary school within a Special Educational Needs (SEN) unit and as cliché as it is I instantly fell in love with education as a career aspect. Seeing how a classroom is run, not from a student's perspective, really got me interested in the development of children and how the classroom can shape that in so many ways. Picking Psychology was an easy choice for me, and it only fed my desire to understand more about human behaviour especially in an educational context and even more so within the neurodiverse community in an educational setting. Upon reading the course content for Psychology, I could see how this would benefit me for pursuing a career in SEN teaching yet also providing a range of different areas of psychology to expand my understanding and appreciation for the human condition.

What has led you back to Queen’s to continue your academic journey now? 

I have returned to Queens to study for a master’s in Applied Developmental Psychology. The reason I have chosen this degree is because it will help me to provide a better and more complete educational experience for pupils that I teach and give me a better and more complete understanding of the complex processes of the continuous development humans undergo from birth to death. This degree will also help to provide a better foundational understanding of the development of children and young adults for me to eventually complete a PhD in Educational Psychology with the hope that I will become an Educational Psychologist myself. 

Since completing your undergraduate degree what have you been up to?

After I completed my undergraduate degree, I went straight to Liverpool to complete my PGCE which I specialized in Special Needs at Liverpool Hope University. This was a 1-year PGCE and was a school direct course called the Merseyside SEN Teaching School Alliance. This was a majority placement route I took which placed me in one of four of the special needs schools in the Liverpool area. The course gradually built up my teaching hours within the week and provided training and personal development as I progressed during my initial teacher training. Since graduating and completing my PGCE and becoming a qualified teacher I moved back home and have been teaching in a mainstream secondary school within an Autism Specific Centre class for the past 2 years.

Moving forward, how do you hope your master’s will influence your career path? 

I hope that my master's will make me a better teacher and allow me to provide the best education I can and to provide the best experience for a child within an educational setting that I possibly can. I hope that my master's will also help me to gain the necessary skills and understanding to eventually complete my PhD in Educational Psychology to then become an Educational Psychologist.

What advice would you give yourself if you went back to the start of your time at Queen’s?   

Advice I would give myself is to join any society within Queens that you find interesting and really immerse yourself into the student experience because the time goes by quickly and it’s the perfect time (again with the cliches) to find yourself and take risks and try new things. 

Another piece of advice I would give to myself would be to do the placement year, as there is no better way to understand how to apply psychological knowledge than to go out into the world of work where they are applying this knowledge everyday. I had friends from my degree that did the placement year, and it made their final year a lot easier because they had a better grasp of how to conduct research, analyse data and apply their knowledge that they have gathered so far.

Anything else you’d like to add in?

Most people know that Psychology is a very female dominated course however from my experience the level of topics covered within the 3 year undergraduate allows for a range of job opportunities to be unlocked and the rise of the area of Sports Psychology for anyone that has a particular interest in sports and how big a role Psychology actually plays in sports will find that this course is extremely interesting. 

Profile submitted October 2023